Aphonic
by DLN-000
Summary: He hasn't talked in weeks, and no one's quite sure why. She counts the days backwards since he's been like this, and suddenly she realizes, the last time he spoke was the last time they knew where their brother was. He disappeared right off the map one day, just like his voice.


I had wanted to write something a bit like this with Roll for a while, but I also had the idea between Rock and Blues. So I put them together.

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**Aphonic**

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He hasn't talked in weeks, and she knows it's not her fault, but she can't help feeling all the same. It's in her nature to want to support him, to want to change that feeling that keeps him so closed up for something much, much better. She's noticed that he won't even look her in the eye these last few days, and it's getting worse every time. It almost makes her wish she wouldn't bump into him during any time of the day anymore.

In reality, she started to notice he was acting differently a long time ago. It was so long, and so many things, in fact, that she isn't sure she can pinpoint exactly when it was that it all began. At first they were small details, barely worth worrying about, that seemed to go on and off in response to the events that occurred around him. Of course he's always been changing, but these changes were different, unordinary. She could feel something was wrong.

The biggest shock probably came –to all of them–, when the radar that had been tracking the eldest robot child for months then suddenly disappeared. It had shown no sign of danger or a struggle, and had been cleared from the map so unexpectedly, as if it had never been there to start with. There wasn't a report of it having been destroyed, or removed, either, so it was a mystery to the three of them.

Naturally this wouldn't have been the first time that Blues would have tried to eliminate his signal. He wasn't one known for liking the idea of always having his exact location known by someone other than himself. But it had been an agreement, between both of her brothers actually, and Roll didn't honestly believe Blues would break that. Rock had been worried about him, after all, after the last time he'd been attacked. It had gone on for too long and he'd had to pull him out of it.

No one in her family had really anticipated that anything like it would happen to him again, and if it did, well they'd have that to alert them about it. But when it disappeared, none of them really knew what to think about it –how to interpret it.

But Rock wanted to go. He didn't bother waiting around to wonder what had gone wrong. He told Light he was going out, to the last spot where the tracker had responded. If he didn't find Blues there he'd search for as far as he could in the surrounding areas.

That was the last day she heard him say anything, she realizes, as she counts the days backwards in her mind from the moment he stopped opening his mouth. Even if he does, no words ever come out, only vain movements and gestures that leave such vague feelings she's at loss on how to respond.

And what happened afterwards, was that Rock didn't find Blues, and neither did he for the rest of that day and night.

The next morning, she woke up to be told by Light that her twin brother had left early to search for Blues again. He might have talked that day, but since she wasn't there for it, she doesn't know, and she counts it like he didn't. Because when he finally reappeared, late into the evening when she and her father decided it was time to call him back; he had simply nodded, and then walked into a room with the doctor, and that was the last Roll saw of him for the day. Again she didn't hear him speak a word.

He was gone for a few days after that incident. Roll would really only catch sight of him once every three or four days, and even then it was brief, and wordless. She had to stop expecting to see him around.

After about two weeks, the searching stopped too. Rock came back home and he seemed to stay now. There wasn't much more he –or anyone– could do to look for Blues now. Wherever he was, probably only he could make himself known again, and it was unclear whether his fate had been to hide or something more sinister. It troubled them all. But time passed, and there was more to their everyday lives than the most distant and misunderstood member of their family.

It was true though that those long, hard weeks marked the greatest shift in Rock's personality. Roll had already been worried with how he had overworked himself going out for days at a time and coming back for only a couple of hours before being off again; but it got worse as she watched him stay, watch him try and go back to their ordinary routine as if there were no reason to disrupt it. He was obviously forcing himself, but there was only so much he could do with that attitude in mind. He undertook his duties and chores around the house and lab efficiently, but he still wouldn't say a word, and there was a clear decrease in the way he expressed himself. There wasn't the same emotion in it as before.

For some time she tried to help him, she tried to encourage him into talking again, even if it was just a few words. Even a "yes" or a "no" would have made her happy, just to prove that he was still being responsive. But he would shake his head, or glance away, or do something like raise his hand and signal his answer. He didn't say a thing. He had gone completely mute.

Of course their father and creator took notice of these actions too, and even spoke with her about it at one point. But neither felt like they could really force him to talk if he didn't want to. They both suspected that it if anything had triggered him into this state of absolute silence it must have been Blues's mysterious disappearance. Light admitted that whatever he had uncovered during his countless searching missions had not been passed onto him, so it was possible he had ended them not out of exhaustion or lack of hope, but because he had found something more that might have made him want to give up.

In secret, Roll was always sure that Rock knew more than he was telling. He certainly wasn't telling _anything_ nowadays, but perhaps that was just to hide what he couldn't bring himself to confess. His growing detachment alarmed her more than anything, and she tried fruitlessly time and time again to reform the link between them that seemed to have been torn. She could even see in the way he'd respond, that he too wanted to return that back to its previous state, but was at loss on how to jump over that impossible to ignore thing that was keeping him silent in the first place.

It was breaking her heart, to see him this way, and see herself. And although she might have not been as close to Blues as Rock, she felt for him as well; she was scared, too.

She was terrified sometimes, because nobody knew what had become of him. She was used to not worrying, because she had been told that there was no need to. But even when it was Rock who left home, and even knowing he could probably take the world of evil up against him, she was still afraid he'd get hurt, or beat, or not be able to return, disappearing from the map just like her other brother had. She was every bit as disturbed by these last months as he was, and she knew Light was still trying with every resource he had to locate Blues. Rock could see it, but whatever was stopping him was too strong, so they could only wait.

He hasn't spoken a word for almost a month now, and both her sister and her father are crazy with concern. That one time he actually sought out Roll on his own, he opened his mouth and met her eyes. He looked every bit as if he were about to break, but he might have wanted to speak, or even do both, at the same time.

But he did neither, and she realized too late that he had not prepared himself for this. He was not going to say, although he had tried. And she smiled at him to show that she would never lose faith in him, and he turned around, and walked away, again.

Something happened to Blues that day, but they'll probably never know, because only Rock knows, and for as long as he does not speak, the truth will be buried forever inside of his mute heart. How horrible or shocking it must have been for him to become like this, she can only imagine. But something has definitely shaken him –and his relationship with the rival of a brother—, in ways far beyond their understanding.

But she continues to count the days, when she does not hear his voice. She counts them because she believes he cannot be silent forever, unless he wishes to forget how to talk completely.

Someday he'll speak again, even if he can never tell truly them, why it was that he stopped in the first place.


End file.
